While talking heads and headlines go hysterical counting votes, here’s the checklist every political party secretly has. Bringing it to you, the people, for the first time:
1 Build a voter base
Shape them, mould them, even create them if they don’t exist. Charles King won the presidential elections in Liberia with 2,34,000 votes. Even though there were only 15,000 registered voters then. If you’ve been manufacturing statistics out of thin air and getting everyone to believe them, now start manufacturing voters.
2 Disqualify those not voting for you
Send voters home if they have no pot. No what? No pot! In 19th century England, only those who owned large cooking pots could vote. Better still, do it Ohio-style! The American state’s constitution prohibited ‘idiots’ from voting… That would rule out most of those screechy gangs on WhatsApp, calling you out as fake. Sadly, the election days in India are dry. An old Virginia tradition had barrels of booze rolled out to polling booths. Guess the drunker the voters are, the less they mind which idiot’s voting which other in.
3 Choose colourful candidates
India’s self-proclaimed Election King is a doctor-businessman in Salem who lost 199 elections. The worldwide winner, however, was a foot powder for smelly toes. Thanks to a well-timed ad blitz urging people to vote for foot hygiene, the foot powder won the most votes during the mayoral elections in Ecuador. Choose candidates with loud voices. Some Aussie voters added their own candidates and then voted for them — like Beyoncé, the TV character Kramer (who didn’t exist) and Gary the Goat (who did). And most of all — choose candidates who are thick-skinned enough not to care. In São Paulo, Brazil, one lakh voters protested their corrupt candidate choices by voting in Cacareco, who happened to be a rhino.
4 Make mega promises you have no intention of keeping
It has been proven it is possible to fool all the people, all the time. Voters worship big talkers. A political party in Reykjavik, Iceland, promised NOT to keep any of their election promises. They got over a third of the votes! In ancient Sparta, the winners were actually decided by who shouted the loudest. If only that system still continued… ah, but would news anchors win then?
5 Predict the winner: Your own party
Ensure that you’ve bought off enough social media pundits to slaughter everyone else. Jokes and fake news should wipe out your opponent. If you need further ammunition, call in the psychics to predict your overwhelming victory. Marketing gurus use a below-the-belt predictor: underwear sales. People content with the economy will vote in the same party and spend on the frills, like underwear. A last resort is to give the people goose bumps. No, seriously, a monkey named Goosebumps in China correctly predicted Trump’s victory.
Ticked all the boxes? Now pay an advertising top gun to write your acceptance speech. You’ve got to be seen crying out of raw emotion (raw onions work better).
Where Jane De Suza, the author of Happily Never After , talks about the week’s quirks, quacks and hacks
